http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html ← both Google and Microsoft are regulars in that list.

Most contributions to OpenBSD are really just contributions to OpenSSH.  Microsoft at least have thrown some money at the project, which is more than you can say about the likes of Red Hat for example.
Influence wise, knowing how the OpenBSD project is managed and run, Microsoft have very little if any of that.  The Linux Foundation, with it's members, board of directors and technical advisory board made up of "Big Tech" is a very different story.

OpenBSD is a tiny project, Linux is a massive corporate sponsored project.  No comparison is worthwhile, and certainly no donations to OpenBSD from any of the "Big Tech" players has any relevance at this stage.

A lot of the fabled hardware support comes in the form of permissive licenced code for proprietary hardware - relying on proprietary firmware.  The big corporations contributing to Linux are actively keeping their proprietary IP well insulated...  I for one fail to see the connection between GPL and broad hardware support.

The "support" mostly comes from paid employees contributing to the kernel.  It's been known for several years now that more than 85% of code contributions are from paid developers.

The Linux kernel is where it is today, because of the corporate contributions of developer time.

But the GPL is the reason why hardware support for Linux is so broad — if the companies want to use the licensed code then they are forced to share any changes they make afterwards.

I don't see any relationship with GPL and hardware support, hardware vendors have been always free to deliver opens-source drivers and still refuse to embrace it fully, and as a matter of fact the Linux kernel is shipped by default with an horrific amount of binary blobs. The synergy behind the GPL is elsewhere in all those stacks that made modern computers so awful.

Don't be silly. Governments put backdoors in places like hard drive controller firmware where the operating system is irrelevant. EDIT: that even works with coreboot

Not true - as we found out from Snowden, the NSA guys don't care about your hard drive. They spend all their time trying to use your webcam to see people walking around naked in your house.

"webcamd" is probably built into the systemd "parental controls" module just for that purpose.

Danielsan wrote:

You sure?

Yes. All true UNIX systems provide a unified set of user space tools along with /sbin/init. The BSDs are closer to true UNIX than Linux so they emulate that approach.

I made no comment about commercial influences.

I will now though:

http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html ← both Google and Microsoft are regulars in that list.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ ← Facebook as a top level contributor? Really?

The whole point between BSD and GNU is the former uses tools licensed as BSD and the latter as GPL and when one needs a tool that belongs to the other it will write its own version with its preferred license. FreeBSD has even deprecated GCC in favor of LLVM/CLang...

I would not care about having infiltration of these corporations, those are everywhere it is a part of the capitalism control, however I would be more concerned when those companies are in the GPLed space because the GPL licenses make the opensource manipulable; by the other hand the BSD licenses do not make the opensource manipulable because corporations can distribute software without giving back the source and rarely help unless it is so strategic that is worth contributing with code even if it will have $0 of ROI.

Danielsan wrote:

You sure?

Yes. All true UNIX systems provide a unified set of user space tools along with /sbin/init. The BSDs are closer to true UNIX than Linux so they emulate that approach.

I made no comment about commercial influences.

I will now though:

http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html ← both Google and Microsoft are regulars in that list.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ ← Facebook as a top level contributor? Really?

Seems like there is nothing that can't be and isn't being coopted. It is the genius of capitalism, and I've seen it over and over again. Anything good and free is bought out sooner or later. Or so it seems. We live in a shit culture.

You sure?

Yes. All true UNIX systems provide a unified set of user space tools along with /sbin/init. The BSDs are closer to true UNIX than Linux so they emulate that approach.

I made no comment about commercial influences.

I will now though:

http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html ← both Google and Microsoft are regulars in that list.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ ← Facebook as a top level contributor? Really?

A word of warning though: opponents of systemd probably won't like the BSDs because all of the user space utilities are developed by the exact same team that provides /sbin/init, just like with Lennart & co... [/troll]

You sure? I listen BSDNow everyday and they are constantly taking the distance from systemd and RedHat. Also they always marks that FreeBSD is a not-profit foundations why Linux is not.

A word of warning though: opponents of systemd probably won't like the BSDs because all of the user space utilities are developed by the exact same team that provides /sbin/init, just like with Lennart & co...

So you're saying they all get paid by IBM to put backdoors into the BSDs so that government spies can steal all our data?

You may find that FreeBSD and probably OpenBSD are ten years behind Linux.

Not really. I don't know about FreeBSD but OpenBSD works just fine on my brand new Ryzen 5850U laptop. The 7.0 release brought in the DRM stack from Linux 5.10.65 and so supports Intel Tiger Lake and AMD Navi 12 & 21 "Sienna Cichlid", Arcturus & Cezanne "Green Sardine" GPUs. And in my experience although hardware support for OpenBSD isn't as broad as with Linux the quality and longevity is *much* better. YMMV.

A word of warning though: opponents of systemd probably won't like the BSDs because all of the user space utilities are developed by the exact same team that provides /sbin/init, just like with Lennart & co... [/troll]

OpenBSD is a distro that is mainly oriented for the Desktop use

Definitely not so, their priority is security!

(Desktop use is accepted, but definitely not a priority.)

As stated above, no auto mounting of external media is a security feature - & CWM was written by the OpenBSD team!

But I will concede, there may be a lack of drivers for some hardware, compared to FreeBSD, but if it is supported, it's a great O/S.

As always though, whatever suits you is the one to use.

Have you looked into openbsd much? I've heard and read from a lot of people who are dismayed by the direction that GNU/Linux has gone (similar to you, based on some of your gemlogging) are turning to openbsd. If you have thoughts on why freebsd is superior, I'd be interested to hear them.

I was undoubted between FreeBSD and OpenBSD but eventually I opted for the first for a bunch of reason: great documentation, more software, great community, ZFS, more automation.

Even if FreeBSD is bigger than OpenBSD the interest around it is 80% server and 20% desktop, although is a general purpose OS the majority of people approach FreeBSD for ZFS and what you can achieve in the server space. From FreeBSD the effort is to keep the desktop relevant but there is any predefined DE hence no one works well as in Devuan for instance.

OpenBSD is a distro that is mainly oriented for the Desktop use, respect FreeBSD has better hardware support, for security reason it still uses FS filesystem (the slowest filesystem ever), nothing works with automation (I mean plugging a pendrive requires the use of CLI), it has its own default WM, CWM, that works perfectly and is perfectly integrated. By default OpenBSD creates a great development enviroment!

If you are on the coding side OpenBSD might be a better options. I found OpenBSD too extreme for my habits, already FreeBSD doesn't do anything if you don't set up it to make that tasks, but OpenBSD goes beyond, I do not want mount a pendrive through a terminal, but most people find this behavior better.

Most important is the hardware compatibility. You may find that FreeBSD and probably OpenBSD are ten years behind Linux. It is well known that Intel stuff (wifi, ethernet, etc...) works pretty good on the BSD all the others hardware vendors are problematic (specially wifi). My old laptop is supported but there is a very annoying bug that prevent me to use the ethernet adapter if I step before on Linux and then in FreeBSD.

The transition is smoother if you have as first requirement the conviction that you want really change your habits; as second suggestion you may use a virtual machine to see how much you will able to reproduce your usual workflow in a different OS even though the difference might be minimal, before to switch I have been using FreeBSD on a virtual machine for months, I decided to use FreeBSD as my OS for my Gemini server, using FreeBSD as server is easier because the installation is modular and by default the only services it enables are DHCP and SSH hence you have very minimal installation by default; lastly your hardware is well recognized and doesn't requires too much troubleshooting, NomadBSD is a derivative of FreeBSD made to run from pendrive it can help you to test your hardware compatibility, if it works fine with FreeBSD then it will likely work with OpenBSD as well.

Last thing is the dual-boot if you want preserve for instance Devuan like I do. These are my considerations but my impression is the BSDs do not consider the dual-booting a condition, they expect to be your only OS like Windows does. If you use efi you can use Refind to manage boot order, if you don't use EFI you must create a manual entry on Grub since Linux doesn't recognize BSD. The Linux behavior is to consider itself as alternative OS to Windows but anything else.

To close my suggestion is go to Virtual Machine, learn how to install FreeBSD or OpenBSD (I have a simple guide for FreeBSD on my capsule), try to reproduce your workflow, check if the software you like are available. Remember that DRM/EME doesn't not work any BSD hence you will not have any streaming services, spotify maybe works through a TUI software, if you rely on closed software these will not be available, etc. There is a compatibility layer between FreeBSD and Linux called Linuxulator that allows to use software that is specifically design for Linux and through which you can install Chrome or Vivaldi but I didn't check that out since I left my Linux partition to use also this crap.

The only missing part here is now just your curiosity! 😉

Devuan is a great distro, (especially if you install from the 'live'), for a desktop.

P.S. Ultimately, it will depend on who has the best O/S for my ARM based RPi SBCs - so far it's Devuan.